Latvian politician calls Soviet monument to Liberators of Riga a “phallus”, urges to demolish it

"Motherland", part of the monument to Liberators of Riga from Nazi invaders. November 2013

08.06.2016, Riga.

On April 6 Latvian MP from the party “Unity” Veiko Spolitis called the monument to the Liberators of Riga a “phallus” and urged to demolish it, RIA Novosti reports.

Soviet warriors-liberators of Riga. Part of the monument.

“Very few such monuments remain in Latvia — one monument in Limbazi, also this phallus in Riga, which is in Pardaugava. (…) Those monuments which were created for an ideological glorification of the regime of Nazis, fascists, or totalitarian Bolshevik regime, are inappropriate,” — RIA cites Spolitis.

Monument to the Liberators of Riga from Nazi invaders

Monument to Liberators of Riga from Nazi invaders, May 9, 2009. Photo by Smig, CC 3.0

According to him, Latvia needs to follow the example of the Polish authorities and demolish the monuments glorifying the “totalitarian Bolshevik regime”.

On March 30, Lukasz Kaminski, the head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (PIN), responsible for investigating crimes against the Polish nation, stated that the republic’s authorities plan to demolish approximately 500 Soviet monuments throughout the country.

The monuments in question are monuments of gratitude to the Soviet Union. These were built by the Red Army in public places. “Preservation of these monuments is a consequence of incompleteness in Poland of the reforms of the early 1990s. It was a fatal mistake, which for many years has been providing the fuel used today in propaganda and provocations directed against our country,” noted the head of the PIN. The memorials, under which the remains of Soviet soldiers are buried, will be protected by the state.